Pacto de Productividad (Pacto) is an international program that seeks to promote the productive role of people with disabilities through the articulation of the different local stakeholders involved in the labor inclusion of this group. This initiative was implemented for the first time in Colombia in 2009. Now, it is currently under development in Honduras, El Salvador, and Chile.
Pacto de Productividad meets the Sustainable Development Goal N° 8.5 because it seeks to ensure that persons with disabilities can access productive and decent work in the open labor market of the countries where it has been or is being implemented.
Despite the entry into force of the Labor Inclusion Law (Law No. 21.015), which establishes a hiring quota of 1% of people with disabilities for public and private organizations with 100 or more workers, Pacto is being implemented in Chile because the country does have a clear and articulated route for the employment training and labor inclusion of people with disabilities that guarantees the effective implementation of this regulation.
Pacto Chile aims to consolidate the platform for public-private collaboration that allows the articulation of the different stakeholders that are part of the ecosystem of labor inclusion of people with disabilities in the Metropolitan Region of the country. This platform establishes the foundations for the participatory construction of a model of labor inclusion that guarantees quality standards and provides technical guidelines for the proper execution of these processes.
Furthermore, this model seeks to link the supply of labor inclusion services for people with disabilities (training for employment, job placement and monitoring of worker performance), with the labor demand of the public and private sectors. To achieve this, virtual and face-to- face training will be carried out for labor intermediation organizations, training organizations, companies and public entities, with the aim of providing them with the knowledge and tools to ensure the quality of services and processes related to labor inclusion.
Once this stage is completed, in order to put into practice the knowledge acquired and strengthen the capacity of these entities to carry out these procedures autonomously and under a quality standard, Pacto Chile will guide the qualified organizations in their roles of training and including people with disabilities in the labor market. As an outcome, it is expected to train 1,600 people with disabilities in areas with highest labor demand (such as ICT) and include 2,000 people with disabilities in the open labor market. Finally, this initiative is possible thanks to the commitment and financial support of BID Lab, Fundación Descúbreme and partners in which inclusion is a pillar and value.
Women's Empowerment: The Nexus of Sustainable Development Goals
At this time of crisis, we need international cooperation and multilateralism; the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must be our guiding light to keep women and girls safe from violence. The SDGs have the great potential to improve the lives of women and girls around the world, and women have the great potential to promote the sustainable development goals. More than 50% of the world's population, yet under- represented in almost every axis of power, women’s empowerment and gender equality lays at the nexus of the potential for world peace and requires accelerated action steps and transformative action. In order to effectively empower and mobilize women across the world, the United Nations, partner countries and organizations must take steps to dismantle systemic and socially accepted violence towards women.
In order to take action toward Sustainable Development Goal 5: women's empowerment and gender equality, member states must take legislative actions and implement programs and policies which promote the economic and political empowerment of women. In the last decade we have seen governments take political steps to encourage female participation in government including mandating equal representation in regulating bodies, and programming which encourages women to run for elected office. I encourage governments who struggle with equitable representation to explore their campaign requirements, hiring practices, and educational systems all of which can be pathways toward the inclusion of women in the halls of power.
Governments and regulatory bodies must also promote programs and policies which empower women economically. Economic dependence can often lead women to stay in situations of domestic violence which might ultimately end their lives. Micro-lending programs which encourage women to use their existing skill sets to develop economic independence have seen huge success across nations and cultures and should continue to be promoted. In addition, education is a recognized pathway for upward mobility.
Member states must encourage young girls to go to school and develop math and reading skills which promote economic independence.
While governments have a large role to play in this, it is also important for community organizations to take the lead in shifting the social standards which normalize domestic violence and violence against women. This has shaped the mission of the foundation:
the Luz Maria Foundation. The mission is to raise awareness, promote public events to advocate for women facing domestic violence, and assist victims through outreach programs and protective shelters. It is the role of organizations to shift the dialogue and discussions of violence against women.
During this time, the global community has seen a terrifying rise in domestic violence and violence against women; as we are forced to stay indoors for public safety, the
safety of women across the world has been jeopardized. The promotion of human rights will guide the solutions of addressing COVID-19 and bring us closer together as a global community.
Fundação Antonio Meneghetti has been working in the countryside of Brazil in initiatives that help to accelerate action and create transformative pathways in order to realize the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development, as stated by the priority theme of the 2020 ECOSOC High Level Segment and of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
The experience of the 23 social and educational projects that we maintain based on the principles of Ontopsychological Pedagogy have been giving us insights on how to accelerate the SDGs´ implementation in our region and also help Brazil to reach the goals. We offer social educational projects mainly for children and youth of the public network of schools of the nine cities that compose the Fourth Colony of Italian Immigration of Rio Grande do Sul (the southmost state of Brazil). Each of our projects has a thematic that attracts children and young people with different profiles: classical music (an youth orchestra), environmental education (project OIKOS), technology education (project Youth & Technology), playing soccer (project Ball Foward), literature and storytelling (project Fostering Intelligence Through Reading), and others.
Through these initiatives, we currently reach around 1500 children and youth. In each of these projects, the students learn what the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) are and which goal is being more applied in that specific project. These students are motivated to talk about the SDGs with their families. As all the projects happen in connection with public schools, the teachers of these schools also learn about SDGs and see how a project can transform the goals in action. Also, in the higher education institution that is connected to our foundation, named Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade, every year, it is developed an SDG project in the discipline of Entrepreneurship of the Bachelor of Law and of the Bachelor of Business. Each year, 40 students of this class divide themselves in groups and go to cities surrounding the campus to develop SDGs projects. They create these projects inspired by demands of each city, such as, public health education, maintenance of public areas, preserving green areas, teaching new competences for young people (such as citizenship classes), stopping food waste, collecting donated clothes for winter and many others.
These initiatives – from our social educational project and the experience on higher education – have showed us that it is of great impact to teach children and youth regarding the SDGs and making them connect this knowledge of the goals to their everyday reality. When a young person learns that his town, his life, the life of his friends and community is being improved by the SDGs, they spread the word and, like this, through work and dialogue, the SDGs truly turn into action. Acting locally, we believe that children, young people and educators can have a global reach. To use the SDGs as a tool of education guarantee not only to accelerate the sustainable action nowadays, as well as, guarantees that this sustainable conscience is taken fairway in the future.
62. Fédération internationale des associations d'inventeurs